More than 1,000 Arizona schools to be tested for lead in drinking water

A USA TODAY motion graphic showing how lead can get into your drinking water.
Ramon Padilla, Karl Gelles and Shannon Green, USA TODAY

State officials stress the effort to test drinking water is precautionary.

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality plans to test more than 1,000 schools across the state for lead in drinking water — an effort state officials say has never been done before on this scope in Arizona.(Photo: Mark Henle/The Republic)

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality plans to test more than 1,000 schools across the state for lead in drinking water — an effort state officials say has never been done before on this scope in Arizona.

The statewide lead screening program, which ADEQ officials stressed is precautionary, kicked off last week. It comes at no cost to Arizona schools.

Lead exposure is especially harmful to young children, though its presence is uncommon in Arizona drinking water.

Since 2012, about 3 percent of water systems in Arizona reported to ADEQ lead samples requiring action under the federal standards, The Republic reported in April.

“We are blind to the status of lead in these schools' drinking water because they've never been sampled, except for those that are their own public water systems.”

But officials said the screening is necessary to gauge how many schools potentially have drinking water sources above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "action level" of 15 parts per billion.

Schools in Arizona that do not serve as their own water provider — which includes all but 85 of the state's 2,000-plus schools — are not required to test their drinking water for lead.

And they don't, for the most part, according to Trevor Baggiore, ADEQ's director of water quality.

However, it is still possible for schools to detect lead in their drinking water even if their water providers are in compliance with EPA guidelines, Baggiore said.

Fixtures that contain lead, including water fountains and water heaters, can leach lead into water especially given the prolonged periods of time in which those water sources might go unused by schools, Baggiore said.

Long-term exposure to lead can cause physical and mental impairment in children.

"We are blind to the status of lead in these schools' drinking water because they've never been sampled, except for those that are their own public water systems," Baggiore said.

Minimal testing done on Arizona schools

The six-month screening program will cost the state about $900,000 and includes 1,033 school sites — more than 7,000 individual buildings — in 205 school districts across Arizona.

Fifteen schools have been screened so far, including schools in the Fowler Elementary School District and Fountain Hills Unified School District. Of those sites, one school — San Manuel High School in Pinal County — was found to have traces of lead in drinking water higher than the EPA's action levels.

The results made publicly available on ADEQ's website, though, do not specify the actual levels of lead detected in the San Manuel school.

The state expects to find schools with traces of lead in their drinking water above the federal safety guidelines. But it's hard to predict exactly how many of the state's district schools will have lead samples requiring action.

The only other time the state made an effort to test for lead in school drinking water was in a 2004 Arizona Department of Health Services study. Three out of 45 schools in that study required action, according to Baggiore.

In a rare example of schools testing on their own, the Nogales Unified School District temporarily shut down the drinking fountains at one of its middle schools in September after tests showed high levels of lead, according to local reports.

Lead in drinking water has been the focus of recent stories by The Republic and USA TODAY following the lead water crisis in Flint, Mich., in 2014.

The Republic reported in March that several water systems in Arizona, including ones that supported schools, waited years to take required action after tests detected high levels of lead.

A USA TODAY investigation last year found 350 schools and day-care centers across the country failed hundreds of lead tests between 2012 and 2015.

"I think Flint, Michigan, brought the nation's consciousness back to lead in drinking water," Baggiore said.

"And because of the fact that there's a focus on lead in drinking water and we know that we have continued to see occasional violations at our public water systems over the course of the past year, we decided that we wanted to be proactive. ... We want to make sure that Arizona's students — those who especially are at risk — are protected."